Posts Tagged ‘low-performing schools’

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Short Term Savings, Long Term Losses

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

Daily, articles describe the fiscal problem for schools.  Tuesday, February 23, 2010, a San Francisco Chronicle front page headline stated “Over 900 pink slips likely for S.F. schools,” the largest, distressed district in the bay area.

CA suburban middle school

CA suburban middle school

Today, Wednesday, February 24, 2010, the Wall Street Journal front page reported disaster for San Mateo County school districts, elementary to community college, affecting high and very low-performing schools with layoffs up and down a beautiful part of the San Francisco peninsula.

The superintendent of well-to-do Lafayette School District states “districts across the state are increasing class sizes, decreasing the length of the school year, eliminating professional development, and eviscerating art, music, athletic and summer school programs.”  See “Complacency has added to our crisis in education” by Fred Brill, San Francisco Chronicle, February 19, 2010.

The catastrophe for students is the procedure whereby huge cuts balance a short term budget, i.e. layoffs aka RIF-reduction in force.

“Increasing class size” means teacher layoffs.  “Eliminating professional development” means teachers providing the service disappear.  No “art, music, athletics and summer school” means RIF.  Furthermore, furloughs and decreases in the number of school year days forewarn that teachers decamp in hopes of a better salary elsewhere-maybe to booming Wyoming.

It may be that school districts are caught in the middle of the state’s fiscal debacle, especially in California.  However, Jeffrey Pfeffer in ‘Lay Off the Layoffs” Newsweek, February 15, 2010, quoted a head of human resources, “If people are your most important assets, why would you get rid of them?”

It’s a business quote, let’s be honest, not a school district’s.  First thing that will come to the reader’s mind is school districts are not businesses.  Agreed.  This blog often says that.  Nevertheless, think about why layoffs sabotage the goals for student achievement.

Immediately, the unemployment benefits that the county will pay cuts into money available for schools.  Money spent when people are rehired cuts into supposed savings.

Next, morale of the remaining staff goes down.  Teachers are redistributed, and there is a direct and indirect cost to resettle in a different school, much less learn the “school climate” at the new location or new grade level.  That’s why the strongest schools have few teachers moving in and out and students remaining at the school from grades K-5.

Another indirect cost is loss of institutional memory.  Especially in low-performing schools where young teachers are often the first to be sent packing, every year the few remaining teachers must spend at least a month of instructional time training new teachers who inevitably are brought in as student demographics shift.

Next, productivity is reduced.  Fatigue sets in.  With substantial layoffs, too few teachers must take on extra duties that had been distributed among more employees.  They get sick.  More teachers take days off and the district must pay for substitutes-another cost.

This blog has no “magic bullet” to avoid projected layoffs for 2010-2011, other than to hope more stimulus money is authorized by Congress.  However, state and local school boards should think “long term.”

How about working through the county to gain volume and thus reduce the substantial cost of supplies per school district?  Right now each school district makes deals, not nearly large enough in volume to save the money required.

The state department of education should advocate for the revised federal health care plan, thus cutting costs for teacher benefits and Medicare, after salaries a major cost to school districts.

County boards of education should strongly advocate for combining small districts into one larger district to save the cost of multiple superintendents and district personnel.  Maybe the goal should be 10-20,000 students per district.  Contentious, but cost-cutting.

Finally, this blog has advocated for the proposal developed two years ago “Getting Beyond the Facts: Reforming California School Finance” that suggests a plan to reorganize the funds available to the state so that money is allocated where it’s needed.

Why should teachers (and so students) be the first to pay the price for a poor economy and state inability to manage its finances?

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Posted in California budget crisis, community colleges, layoff notices, low-performing schools, public schools, school finance reform |
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Pink, Pink, Red, Pink

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

It’s February and that means everything is pink and red hearts and flowers on worksheets, corridor walls, and windows facing the playground.  Whether learning Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s famous poems for Black History Month or receiving tooth brushes to encourage every child to brush his teeth and keep his gums pink for Dental Health Month, it’s still cheery pink handouts that are taken home.

Looks like all is fine and dandy.

However, as my BTSA (Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment) consultant says when I ask for advice, it’s year 2 problems of which suddenly you are aware.  The first year was such a rush.  Now you worry about the girl who won’t finish her work and keeps begging for help without following the steps you’ve laid out and reviewed over and over to avoid this problem.  It seems I’ve tried every ‘trick’ in the book.  For instance, I ask how she’s feeling when I see her working well with her partners, but the one that has worked best is the old-time stickers on a card for specified behaviors that goes home weekly for reward time at the computer and so on.

I’ve mentioned the money difficulties for my district and they are not any better.  At every budget meeting, in fact, more funds disappear.  The second year teachers have all been told to expect “pink slips” and it’s only February.

I’ve been reading about the lickety-split passage of education legislation by the legislature in order to pick up federal funds as if $700 million is going to save California.  We know schools need every penny, but the teachers in my district have been warned that the money will not appear at our door.  Our students are high-achieving and most of the money is for the lowest of the low-performing schools.

It is amazing though.  My father passed on that an acquaintance in Los Angeles, well-versed in education issues, said that so many states have already revised their education legislation, it’s one of the biggest positive moves brought on by the Obama Administration in the past year.  I wonder how long before such news hits the media.  Or is it only the complainers who will be heard.

Still some of the legislation and some of the money will foster changes to teacher evaluation and changes to the pay structure I’m already used to.  Honestly, in these days of recession one advantage of teaching is a salary and benefits that can be counted on.

I know that several large school districts like Washington DC have had completely new evaluation plans handed out by the superintendent with no negotiations from the teacher’s union.  I can’t imagine that will happen in California.

There is, however, the plan to revise California standards and benchmarks which is a good idea.  But when we talk at lunchtime, we all know it will not be next year that the standards are ready or that evaluation changes will be negotiated, much less that pay will be determined by how high your evaluation ‘number’ is.  And who decides, the state, the district?  That’s a red hot issue.

June?  With the pink construction paper already gone from the supply room in February, is that an omen of where I’ll be?  One of 102 teachers from my school district standing in the unemployment office, laid off, pink slip in hand?

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Posted in California budget crisis, low-performing schools, public schools |
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Pay for Performance?

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

How did the business model term, “pay for performance,” morph into the preferred way to assess teachers–by the number of student’s proficient on a test?

The issue has risen in an effort to turn around low-performing schools.

In 1992 the California state legislature set rules to allow charter schools, financed with the same money that would otherwise go to a traditional public school, often perceived as playing on the monetary issue.

Over time, according to statistics from state exams that public-financed charter school students must take, elementary charter school performance is “neither better nor worse” than traditional public schools.

Pay, however,  is often an issue.  See “As More Charter Schools Unionize, Educators Debate the Effect,” by Sam Dillon, The New York Times, July 27, 2009.

So, what next?

Advocated by the Department of Education’s Race to the Top plan to close the achievement gap in low-performing schools, one strongly advised mechanism to improve student achievement is “performance pay.”

Somehow, based on their students’ scores on one test and parent feedback, teachers will find the offer of better pay an incentive to work harder.  While the model may provide an incentive to complete tasks in the office or factory in an efficient manner, thus improving production, that is not how a school is organized.

A successful school is one where children are supported by teachers who know the curriculum and the best strategies to teach.  The parents, staff, and administration animate students to learn and the buildings are safe.  Exams are one tool used to analyze where students are doing well and where they need another technique or tool to master the subject.  Such a school needs adequate funds, but “performance pay” is not the incentive.

In California for a few years before the state budget went haywire, “school-based pay” bonuses were the rage.  Successful schools, measured by the state’s Academic Performance Index (API), received a substantial amount of money to use at the school site.  Rumbles of discontent began to surface over which schools received awards and why, but the plan was dropped when funds dried up.

Some schools in some districts, Los Angeles Unified for one, have tried various plans, often called “merit pay.”  Teachers vote to waive tenure and the salary schedule negotiated by the local union for the possibility of making a larger salary if classroom instruction improves and their students do well on state exams.  Some plans have been dropped; none have become institutionalized yet.

Another plan is negotiated around “knowledge and skill-based” pay.  A district like Douglas County Schools in Colorado, set in a well-to-do area, has few problems with meeting benchmarks on state exams.  The plan addresses pay for extra duty, for professional development, for meeting goals on an evaluation plan.  The incentive pay relies on foundation support and grants.

On the other hand, the school where I worked in San Jose Unified School District with the goal of school improvement on the API, budgeted monies for time spent on professional development and leadership meetings after school hours, and set aside monies for substitutes to allow teachers to analyze test data and plan strategies to improve student learning.  Over time, student performance improved.

Here was a kind of “knowledge and skill-based” pay about which Robert Weil of American Federation of Teachers has remarked, “The best performance plans are standard operating procedure.”  See “Pay for Performance: What Are the Issues?” by Ellen R. Dalisio, Education World, 2006.

None of these models address this question:  how does performance pay help schools turn around when the sole burden on the teacher’s back is how well students do on a single test?

Here and Now in the Education World will look at those issues in the next post.

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Posted in Academic Performance Index, American Federation of Teachers, Race to Top, low-performing schools, public schools, successful schools |
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We Are Going and We Will Get There

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Woyaya, a gentle, melodic song from South Africa encourages the singer to keep walking, even when the road is hard and muddy and rough, or when she can’t see how far she still has to go.

Of course, the song was composed to keep up the spirits of those pressing for freedom from apartheid, but even now for low-performing schools in today’s education world, the road is long and rough.  And those who embark on a turn around effort need every good word and good tune.

Fortunately, a few studies (see post 6/24) have researched the traits of the schools that are moving in spite of the travails on the road.

In 2008 I heard a presentation from the Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, Inc. that outlined the bold steps a school,  school district, and state must take to see students perform as well as students in the most high-performing schools in the country.

Geoffrey Canada, Founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone, 2004, was quoted, “Instead of helping some kids beat the odds…why don’t we just change the odds?”

A brief summary of the findings to change the odds shows that instead of a model that merely tries to keep up with the curriculum, the school or district or state must pursue a model that will help each member of the entire school succeed.  Change occurs when the students, teaching staff, administration, and parents are ready to act.

Unfortunately, as we’ve posted on this blog, (5/16 and 5/20), there is little leverage, i.e. funding, from No Child Left Behind legislation; there are few exemplars that are easily available to school districts; there is a lack of public will to sustain support for any school.

Finally, there is a lack of highly visible collaboration among schools, districts, and the state to pull together-as the song urges, no matter how hard the road or far away the end of the trail.

Now, to overcome the odds (some say 5000 low-performing schools will need to be restructured by 2010) the report from the Mass Insight group offers three components, sending the undaunted toward coherent, comprehensive change.

First, revise the conditions for work, time, money, staff, and programs used.  Teachers and administrators will all have to agree on the incentives for work (often a teacher’s union issue), accept the negative impact of the status quo, and be willing to pursue aggressive performance targets.

Second, the capacity to turn around a school requires a school staff that understands and prepares to sustain a revised curriculum, invites other community partners to support the turn around (from nearby universities, for example), and includes students and parents in the effort.  See the article at the end of the Program tab for takecareschools.com.

Third, clustering bolsters successful collaboration for change, the desire to be part of a successful team.  For instance, several schools can band together to access resources, share success, and offer support.

While the components for program improvement seem obvious in a report, be assured beating the odds requires relentless, consistent effort.

That’s why I remember the words “It will be hard we know, and the road will be muddy and rough, but we’ll get there.”

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Posted in Education, Elementary, Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, NCLB, No Child Left Behind Act, low-performing schools, public schools, school reform, successful schools |
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Dodge the Bar or Leap the Hurdle?

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Teachers know that school programs come and go.  No wonder they roll their eyes and say just wait it out.  I can verify this claim.  I was a long time teacher and have seen plenty of “new” programs, solutions for any difficulty possible to name.

However, the one worthy mandate of the original No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation is that schools across the nation are required to be accountable for student success.  First implemented in 2001, that’s a long, long time ago in the K-12 education world.

Of course, little federal money was authorized to assure the mandate’s success.  States chose from a myriad of assessment tools.  Each state decided at which point students were considered proficient in reading and math.  School districts were left to come up with teacher training and the models of curriculum and instruction to help students succeed.

All those hurdles were enshrined in the NCLB Act during eight years when legislatures were in a constant budget struggle to find funds to support public education.

Until now, many states did the minimum, as has been reported in numerous news articles, so few comparisons have been made to see how children across the nation are doing.  For example, proficiency was set at a ridiculously low level.  The selected assessment tools were poorly designed and offered little information.  Teachers were not provided training to analyze assessment results and plan lessons to improve student achievement.

In spite of the urge to dodge the bar, a number of states and schools and school districts managed to set high standards and show success, especially important in low-performing schools found in neighborhoods with many students “at risk.”  Homelessness, second language issues, and low income levels all set obstacles for student success.

Slowly, with conscientious support at the district level and competent, relentless school personnel, student levels of achievement improved and will continue to improve as long as all components that support the outcomes are kept in place.

We should be relieved that some schools took on the challenge and leaped the hurdles.  Now that models of success have come to the fore, the education community must not let go.

I looked at studies of three models in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Cincinnati Public Schools, and Hamilton, Tennessee, all of which are good, if not perfect, examples of schools making progress.  Such schools, found in neighborhoods across the country, do not use the exact same curriculum, or have the same daily schedule, or rely on the same organization of staff.

They do all have certain components of attitude, teacher collaboration, professional development, and parent and community support.  They can demonstrate how students have achieved.  That’s being accountable.

If interested, the website for the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (five universities pooling resources) is filled with articles that address studies and research about successful schools.  Search for articles on ‘accountability.’

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Posted in Education, NCLB, No Child Left Behind Act, low-performing schools, school accountability, successful schools |
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